"It's irking me so bad," Cargill said. But I cant accept it because they lied about it. Two trials against Officer Joseph Weekley ended without verdicts on a charge of reckless use of a gun. Weve got nothing but bullet fragments., A neighbor who tends the lawn in front of the dope house out of respect to Huff wonders why so many cops came in the first place, given that the police hardly come around at all, much less that many cops that fast on a home break-in.. Almost half of all adults are illiterate.Duncan may lie awake, but many civic leaders appear to walk around with their eyes sealed shut. Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley-Jones, 7, died May 16, 2010 after being shot by an officer during a police raid in Detroit. The case had been set to go to trial next week. She arrived too late. And he wouldnt even help her. Do a Google search for "Aiyana Jones" and you get just 42,200 results. There are plenty of good people in Detroit, boosters like to say. It was Jameson who finally dragged Huff out of the house and gave him CPR in the driveway, across the street from the Boys & Girls Club. You might say that the homicide of Aiyana is the natural conclusion to the disease from which she suffered, Schmidt told me. So what? Fieger barked. Robert Bobb was hired in 2009 as the emergency financial manager and given sweeping powers to balance the books. Sanders was Aiyana Jones's paternal aunt, the girlfriend of Chauncey Owens, and the daughter of Mertilla Jones. The service was held at Second Ebenezer Church in Detroit, a drab cake-shaped megachurch near the Chrysler Freeway. Once at Aiyanas graveside, Charles Jones released a dove. In August 2014, he was convicted and sentenced to a year in prison on four counts, including false imprisonment and felony cruelty to children. The conceit of the show is that homicide detectives have 48 hours to crack a murder case before the trail goes cold. Behind him stood two rookies. Gibson bonded out last January and actually showed up for his trial in circuit court on February 17. Other auto plants sprang up on the East Side: Packard, Studebaker, Chryslers Dodge Main. But Officer Joseph Weekley accidentally shot Aiyana in the head, killing her. Go. He wore a gold bracelet as thick as a gymnasium rope. Sharptons full of shit, said Cargill, a brassy 39-year-old who works as a stock clerk at Target. [31] In June 2013, Howard pleaded "no contest" to the obstruction of justice charge, and the perjury charge was dismissed. I know society looks at a person like me and wants me to go away, she said. A half-dozen masked officers of. Bobb did uncover graft and fraud and waste, however. Dr. Carl Schmidt is the chief medical examiner there. [52], A civil rights lawsuit questioned Weekley's account of the incident, claiming the grenade had gone through the window and struck Aiyana. The day Barrens cleaned out his desk, a burglar cleaned out Barrens house. One witness had him pegged for 13 years old. Weekley claimed Aiyana Jones' paternal grandmother, Mertilla Jones, attempted to slap his MP5 submachine gun, causing it to fire. Was it inevitable, as the doctor said, that abject poverty would lead to Aiyanas death and so many others? I saw him in the face of my sister, who died a violent death in a filthy section of Detroit a decade ago. Three ISO members describe what happened when a neo-Nazi . Two days later, on May 16, police arrived at the house where Aiyana Jones lived, hoping to find Owens. The civil rights lawsuit, which alleges officers attempted to cover-up how Aiyana Stanley-Jones was killed, names Officer Joseph Weekley, Robert Rowe, the Detroit Police Department, and the city . Aiyana Jones, Up Closed, https://upclosed.com/people/aiyana-monay-stanley-jones/; Aiyana Jones, Mother Jones, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2010/09/aiyana-stanley-jones-detroit/; Aiyana Jones, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/17/aiyana-stanley-jones-joseph-weekley-trial_n_5824684.html; CBS News, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/aiyana-stanley-jones-case-final-charge-dropped-against-detroit-cop-in-fatal-raid/. Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox. In 2010 Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley-Jones, a seven-year-old African American girl, was accidentally shot and killed during a raid that was conducted by the Detroit, Michigan Police Department's Special Response Team. Can you pitch in a few bucks to help fund Mother Jones' investigative journalism? Look at the Trending Topics on Twitter. [65][unreliable source?] People taking advanage of my benevolence. But Geoffrey Fieger calls it police arrogance. JeRean balled up his tiny fist. For instance, in 2008 a man was shot in the head. The grenade landed so close to Aiyana that it burned her blanket. Copyright 2023 Mother Jones and the Foundation for National Progress. Go ahead, walk in the Detroit River and disappear. But I cant. Three officers shot, standoff follows in Kansas City, Mo., police say, Vanessa Bryant, family settles claims over Kobe crash site photos for $28.5M. This could be a precedent setting case if the Court . We're a nonprofit (so it's tax-deductible), and reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget. [12] She was one of three children of the couple and had four halfsiblings. Aiyana Jones' step aunt Kayia White and step mom Dominique Simpson, right, sit on the front porch next to a blood spattered sofa in Detroit on . Do you got a problem or something? Sheffield came to see Cargill. Based on the findings from a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in June 2014 and entitled War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing, which looked at thousands of documents from police departments across the country, Ezekiel Edwards, the director of the ACLUs criminal law reform project, says needlessly deploying Swat teams is part of a trend among nationwide police forces which increasingly [see] themselves as military tactical units. You can blame it on the John Deere mechanical cotton-picker of 1950, which uprooted the sharecropper and sent him north looking for a livingwhere he found he was locked out of the factories by the unions. Owens didn't like the way the Southeastern High School teen had looked at him, according to court testimony. In 2010 Aiyana MoNay Stanley-Jones, a seven-year-old African American girl, was accidentally shot and killedduring a raid that was conducted by the Detroit,Michigan Police Departments Special Response Team. The team, which had received intelligence that at least one rifle was in the house,wasaccompanied by a crew from the cable TV show, "First 48.". "(Jones') parole guideline score placed him in the high probability of parole range," Gautz said in an email. Al Sharpton delivered the eulogy, though his heart did not seem to be in it. It would be easy to lay the blame on McNeal for the circumstances in which she raised her sons. As it turns out, he was filming a pilot for his own reality show, entitled The Chief. Weekleys trial began in June 2013 and ended in a mistrial when a jury failed to reach a verdict. The city grew to 1.3 million people from 300,000 after Ford opened his Model T factory. All Rights Reserved. Skyscrapers sprang up virtually overnight. Oh, stay your ass right here, Owens growled. The jury stall resulted in seven voting "not guilty" and five voting "guilty". On May 21, 2016, nearly six years after Joness death, the Detroit chapter of Black Lives Matter organized the first rally in her memory. But when you call for help, it seems like no ones there. He caught a lunch lady stealing the childrens milk money. The suspect fingered for Blakes murder, Chauncey Owens, lived in the upstairs flat, with Charles Jones sister. So is the house across the street. It occurred during a frenzied raid by elite officers who burst through the door to search for a murder suspect after throwing a flash grenade to confuse anyone inside. In Detroit, only 1 in 3 kids will graduate from high school. The radio was tuned to NPR and A Prairie Home Companion came warbling out of my speakers. But McNeal messed upshe admits as much. At its peak popularity, 810 fires were set in a three-day span. David Corn, Noah Lanard, and Dan Friedman. Im trying to find him, Sheffield complained. Scott said a civil suit had been filed and an appeal made to US attorney general Eric Holder to pursue a case for the violation of Aiyanas civil rights. They made it to the trauma ward, where JeRean was pronounced dead. It is like that all over Detroit, where whole blocks regularly go dark with no warning or any apparent pattern. The morning after he was shot, Chaises clippers were mysteriously deposited on his front porch, wiped clean and free of hair. Jones was born on July 20, 2002, to Charles Jones and Dominika Stanley in Detroit. That factory closed in 1956 and was left to rot, pulling down the East Side, which pulled down the city. Detroit. You know? Shoddily equipped firemen face some 500 arsons a month.Detroit has been synonymous with arson since the 80s, when the city burst into flames in a pre-Halloween orgy of fire and destruction known as Devils Night. A small donation would help us keep this available to all. This is not about policing, he said. Southeasterns motto is Age Quod Agis: Attend to Your Business. And JeRean did. So Dr. Schmidt keeps them on layaway, zipped up in body bags as family members wait for a ship to come in that never seems to arrive. [15], The building was a duplex; Owens's girlfriend LaKrysta Sanders lived in the upstairs apartment, while her mother and Aiyana Jones' grandmother, Mertilla Jones, lived in the downstairs apartment. The smell was beastly. The city provided clothing, fuel, rent, and $10 every week to adults for food; children got $5. Technicians are currently working on the problem. Aiyana Stanley-Jones, pictured in family photograph. Seven-year-old Aiyana Jones was sleeping on the couch next to her grandmother in their Detroit, Michigan home when a SWAT team threw a flashbang through the window, which landed on her blanket. It was all for the cameras. Her grandmother, Mertilla Jones, was close by. To me, thats like writing about the surf conditions in the Gaza Strip. The environment didnt affect us none, Jones said. Outside, three men were loading the boiler, tubs, and sinks into a trailer to take to the scrap yard. The city filled with people from all over the world: Arabs, Appalachians, Poles, African Americans, all in their separate neighborhoods surrounding the factories. Outside, a reality television crew filmed the events for A&E. His brother stood over the dead man, a pistol in his hand, keeping an eye on the door in case someone walked in wanting to settle things. Dante Barry, a 26-year-old organizer and executive director of the Million Hoodies Movement for Justice, said the outcome of the case was disappointing but not surprising. Weekley was the first officer to enter the home, seconds after a flashbang grenade a war device created by the British SAS in the 1960s to disorient with a blinding flash and a temporarily deafening noise was lobbed into it. [41] A man called me once to say he had witnessed a murder, but the police refused to take his statement. You might blame the UAW, which demanded things like full pay for idle workers, or myopic Big Three management who, instead of saying no, simply tacked the cost onto the price of a car. If that isnt a record for any major metropolis, it is certainly a record for Detroit. Twenty-five-year-old Charles Jones had just gone to bed after covering his 7-year-old daughter Aiyana with her favorite blanket. Chauncey Owens, the uncle wanted on murder charges, was said to be going in and out of the house as normal and could have been apprehended during the day. She later explained that she reached for her granddaughter when the grenade came through the window and that is what caused her to hit the officers gun. Evans driver dropped him with a single shot. I need help. Folks want to blame Aiyana's "crime ridden" neighborhood for her death. In Detroit, a new car costs more than the average house. Then they said he ran out the back of the house, even though there is no back door. But the SWAT team didnt wait. She was only a baby, man. It would also help inspire the creation of the Black Lives Matter Movementthree years later. In the end, Gibson was charged with Huffs murder and the attempted murders of four more officers. War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of American Policing. People are awake. Owens, a habitual criminal, was arrested upstairs minutes after Aiyanas shooting and charged for the slaying of JeRean. Officers deployeda "flash bang" grenadeand kicked in the front door, and raid team leader Joseph Weekley led the crewinto the house. BlackPast.org is a 501(c)(3) non-profit and our EIN is 26-1625373. Even in Detroit, a predominantly black city. They killed a child and then they lied about it.. It's been a year since 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley Joneswas killed by members of a Detroit Special Response team. and Weekley for the unlawful use of excessive force. Weekley still is charged with careless discharge of a firearm causing death in the May 2010 shooting, which happened as police executed a search warrant for a murder suspect. "This was an assassination by video," said Roland Lawrence as he and others watched a small plane . Detroit VA hospital harmed patients, altered records, investigation reveals, $8.5 million wrongful death lawsuit settlement, Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. He didn't elaborate. I think its abominable. Assistant prosecutor Rob Moran told the judge that the misdemeanor was being dropped in the "best interests of justice." About 350 people are murdered each year in Detroit. Weekley will not go to a third trial. The ones pictured here are all found on one block. The police were . He admitted in his first trial that, "It's my gun that shot and killed a 7-year-old girl. Both trials ended with hung juries. There are some 10,000 unsolved homicides dating back to 1960. February 24, 2023. That night, she was murdered by the very people meant to "protect" and "serve" her. She told me that JeReans best friend Chaise Sherrors, 17, had been murdered the night beforean innocent bystander who took a bullet in the head as he was on a porch clipping someones hair. That's it. On May 14, 2010, JeRean Blake, a senior at Southeastern High School of Technology and Law was shot and killed near an intersection on Detroits east side. There are lawyers and doctors and auto executives with nice homes and good jobs, community elders trying to make things better, teachers who spend their own money on classroom supplies, people who mow lawns out of respect for the dead, parents who raise their children, ministers who help with funeral expenses. . In 2019, Jones' family agreed to an $8.5 million wrongful death lawsuit settlement against the city of Detroit in connection with the raid. Radley Balko | 5.24.2010 3:00 PM. The manslaughter trial was declared a mistrial. I left McNeals porch and started my car. Responding to a breaking-and-entering and shots-fired call at 3:30 a.m., Officer Brian Huff, a 12-year veteran, walked into that dark house. WHat actually happened to this little girl? Compounding the tragedy is the fact that the police threw the grenade into the wrong apartment. When I moved back to Detroit two years ago, I profiled a firehouse on the East Side. The SWAT team tried the steel door to the building. The flashbacks. Sometimes they come in a Crown Victoria with only a defibrillator and a blanket, because there are no other units available. His weapon fired a single shot, the bullet striking Aiyana in the head and exiting her neck. [50][bettersourceneeded] The casket was white and was afterwards driven to the grave by horse-drawn carriage. [6][7][8] On October 10, the judge declared a mistrial due to jury deadlock. . "It bothers them," she said. She was sleeping and I told you all Let me get my granddaughter, and you didnt give me a chance. Fieger responded by saying he does not have the supposed video,[57] which he claims was made by the A&E Network reality show The First 48. I am sick. Take for instance the death of 7-year-old Aiyana Jones, who was shot and killed during a police raid at their Detroit home. The family of Aiyana Jones, the 7-year-old girl accidentally killed by a Detroit police officer during a raid in 2010, has reached settlement with the city o. Killing of Aiyana Jones. What the fuck do you think? he said. [54][55], Attorney Fieger claimed that footage, from an undisclosed source, showed that the lethal bullet came from outside the home, rather than inside, as police said. It just goes on, she said. Aiyana Stanley-Jones was seven years old and asleep on a couch with her grandmother when Detroit police raided their east side home looking for a murder suspect in 2010. You dont go into a home around midnight. Its about state-sanctioned violence., US police departments are increasingly militarised, finds report, Original reporting and incisive analysis, direct from the Guardian every morning. Aiyana was killed when police raided a house to capture a murder suspect. Seconds after Aiyana's blanket caught fire, the SWAT team stormed through the door, and mistakenly shot Aiyana through the neck, killing her. Its some lil niggas at the store talking shitlets go whip they ass, Detective Theopolis Williams later testified that Owens told him during his interrogation. [37], Weekley's retrial started in September 2014. Uncategorized. [CLICK HERE FOR CHARLIE LEDUFFS EXPOSE ON THE DETROIT AMBULANCE SYSTEM. In this shit, a one-year-old played next door, barefoot. Mertilla Jones was held overnight by Detroit police and then released. I get no sleep. Aiyana Jones was a seven year old girl living in Detroit, who was killed by the police while sleeping in her own home. 42,200. There are no fewer than two TV dramas, two documentaries, and three reality programs being filmed here. Family: 7-year-old shot by police was asleep. Im worried they went Hollywood, said a high-ranking Detroit police official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the investigation and simmering resentment in the streets. I think its evil. 2) NO WEAPONS OF ANY KIND WERE FOUND IN OR OUTSIDE THE HOME OF MERTILLA JONES after the police Special Response Team raid. . If such a thing could be true, Chaises neighborhood is worse than JeReans. By 1958, 20 percent of the Detroit workforce was jobless. People involved. I saw the tape and wrote about its existence after the killing of Aiyana, but the story went nowhere until two months later, when someone in City Hall leaked a copy to the local ABC affiliate. Rayshard Brooks was a 27-year-old African American restaurant worker who lived in Atlanta. Detroit has since made little progress on the federal consent decree. And America is buying. He assigned the SWAT team the job of rounding up murder suspects, a task that had previously been done by detectives. It fired. Thats five times as many as New York, in a city one-tenth the size. You could blame it on the gas shocks of the 70s that opened the door to foreign car competition. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2023 demands. As officer Joseph Weekley walks free, another community is demanding answers about the increasing militarisation of law enforcement. I was allowed to meet with Charles Jones the following morning at Fiegers office, but with the caveat that I could only ask him questions about the evening his daughter was killed. [61][62][63], In May 2016, BlackMattersUS[64][unreliable source?] In fact, there are no chain grocery stores in all of Detroit. And TV may have needed some pyrotechnics. Detroit demolishes only 500 homes a year, thanks to concerns over lawsuits and environmental hazards, as well as lack of funds and ineptitude. The department decided to withdraw him from active duty shortly after the shooting on May 16, 2010. With Chief Evans vacationing overseas with a subordinate, Fieger ran wild, holding a press conference where he claimed he had seen videotape of Officer Weekley firing into the house from the porch. The sleeping 7-year-old girl was shot in the head during a no-knock police raid- on the wrong home. Sharpton left and the Rev. We noticed you have an ad blocker on. [12] Weekley had been featured on another A&E police reality show, Detroit SWAT. Forego a bottle of soda and donate its cost to us for the information you just learned, and feel good about helping to make it available to everyone. Barry, who has been active in demonstrations against police violence and whose organization has mounted a formal campaign to demilitarize the police, said there were two separate justice systems in the US. Owens sped two blocks back to Lillibridge and gathered up a posse, according to his statement to the police. On October 10, the second trial ended in another mistrial. Would you take a job at that Chrysler plant if there were any jobs there? I asked one of the men, who was sweating under the weight of the cast iron. [32][33] Allison Howard was sentenced to two years of probation in July 2013, and fined $2,000. Outside court, a spokesman for Aiyana's family criticized the judge for her comments. A former risk manager for the district was indicted for siphoning off $3 million for personal use. They still owe me rent, he said with a face about the Joneses. A minute later, a friend took the two dollars as a keepsake. Maybe because the cameras were rolling, maybe because a Detroit police officer had been murdered two weeks earlier while trying to apprehend a suspect. She thanked me for coming and showed me her home, which was clean and well kept. [59], On April 2, 2015, nearly five years following Jones's death, Officer Weekley was returned to active duty as a Detroit police officer. The illiteracy, child poverty, and unemployment rates hover around 50 percent. Seconds after entering the house, where the grenade had caused Aiyanas blanket to catch fire, Weekley fired one fatal shot. 91.7 Ann Arbor/Detroit 104.1 Grand Rapids Its going to stop, he promised. [9][10] But the people of Lillibridge Street still look like theyve been picked up by their hair and dropped from the rooftop. [2], After the shot was fired, Weekley reported to his sergeant that a woman inside had grabbed for his gun. Aiyana Jones settlement On April 4, Attorney Geoffrey Fieger announced that the City of Detroit had agreed to an $8.2 million settlement in the 2010 slaughter of Aiyana Jones, 7, by another joint task force incuding Detroit Police Officer Joseph Weekley during a military-style assault on her grandmother Mertilla Jones' home. Judge Cynthia Gray Hathaway address the court on Friday. Sherrors was killed by a stray bullet while cutting a friends hair on a front porch just 27 days after JeRean died. Weekley shot Aiyana Stanley-Jones as she slept on a couch in a Detroit home in 2010. Furthermore, the police department and unnamed supervisors of the Special Response Team in the city of Detroit were being sued for violating the civil rights of Aiyana Jones through their training and policy procedure. Besides, there was always a job in America when you needed one. Unclaimed bodies at the Wayne County MorgueTHE RAID ON THE Lillibridge house that took little Aiyanas life came two weeks and at least a dozen homicides after the last time police stormed into a Detroit home. There are at least 50 corpses on hold in his morgue cooler, some unidentified, others whose next of kin are too poor to bury them. There were even toys on the lawn. Then JeRean was murdered. Hes from New York. Young Municipal Center in Detroit. [12][17][18] Officer Weekley claimed that the flash grenade subsequently blinded his view of the person on the couch in the living room. JeReans mother drove as he gurgled in the backseat. Little Aiyana's death is heartbreaking! Weekley's first trial ended in a mistrial in June 2013. [19], Police officers, bystanders, and residents of the home disagreed about the events that followed. Me? A good kid with average grades, JeRean went to Southeastern High, which is situated in an industrial belt of moldering Chrysler assembly plants. The kids are dropping like fliesespecially young black malesand hes got nothing but useless words.. Impoverished communities such as Detroit, which is almost 83% black and has a poverty rate of 39%, have been on the receiving end of a decades-long war on drugs, which has made the US the country with the largest number of people behind bars, ahead of China and Russia.